Remarkably detailed portrait of a now-lesser-known icon.
An in-depth profile of Lafayette, “hero of two worlds.”
Many Americans, if they’ve heard of Lafayette at all, may recall a brief mention in history class of the young Frenchman who ably assisted George Washington during the Revolutionary War. In this engrossing work, Miller (Creatures of the Spirit, 2002, etc.) seeks to rectify that situation by providing a fuller account of the personal, political, and military intrigues surrounding Lafayette’s pivotal role in early American history. Notably, Lafayette maintained friendly relationships with the first eight American presidents. He considered Washington a paternal figure and also developed a close rapport with Jefferson, who, in a letter excerpted here, sent heartfelt condolences when Lafayette’s wife died. Miller’s concise style captures the essence of these amicable interactions: “Lafayette could chide his friend over slavery and the president could remind him that he might have prevented Burr’s treachery.” Furthermore, Miller skillfully reconstructs the turmoil in France that subsequently consumed Lafayette’s energies. At the heart of this work is an assessment of Lafayette’s leadership capabilities here and abroad: “Too often in this turbulent time he asked advice of others and found it difficult to make decisions, a fatal flaw when a leader must always be his own best counsel. Even though Lafayette seemed an ideal leader,” Miller says, “his record in France, unlike that in America, shows he was not. This explains why in France he does not hold the same esteem of his countrymen that he does in the United States.” Miller devotes a large portion of the text to the hero’s welcome Lafayette received in 1825 as he toured America in advance of the 50th anniversary celebration of Bunker Hill. In fact, some readers may feel overwhelmed by the great detail with which Miller describes the tour. However, as the author notes, Lafayette, then 67, impressively covered over 5,000 miles in under four months using the transportation modes of the era, and the emotional impact of the beloved general embracing former soldiers (or their children if they had since passed) along the route is undeniable.
Remarkably detailed portrait of a now-lesser-known icon.Pub Date: July 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-5998-1
Page Count: 444
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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